King for a Day (2 page)

What the hell did that mean? Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I knew very little about being a Seer and had yet to accept the existence of my “gift,” but King had opened my eyes to many, many strange and impossible things. One of which was the reality of sixth senses and abilities that defied logic or science. I, for example, could see colors—emotional impressions, if you will—of people and/or objects even after they’d left a place or passed on. King had thought to use my ability to track down something he’d been hunting for a very, very long time: the Artifact. I had no idea what it did, but I hadn’t proven to be much use helping him find it.

I looked down at my feet, wondering why they refused to move. Apparently, they weren’t as brave as my hands. I sighed and decided to look inside, using my gift.

I relaxed my lids, closing them just a little, and focused on my shallow breaths. When I reopened them and stared into the darkness of King’s warehouse, it was like gazing into a giant kaleidoscope of swirling rainbows. Every color was present, from the lightest to the darkest, not that I understood what they all meant. Red, I knew, was violent pain. Black, death. Blue, sorrow. Green was life. And purple? That was King. He let me see his colors once, only once, and it was the moment my feelings for him began to shift from hate and fear into something else, something I didn’t want to talk about. But maybe those messed-up feelings were really why I was there.

I dropped my head. “Dammit.” I had to go inside. I’d have to persuade the rest of my body to be as brave as my hands.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight app, took three quick breaths, and stepped inside, where I quickly found a bank of light switches on the wall. When I flipped them on, the place lit up like a stadium.

“Holy shit.” My breath left my body.
What is this place?

Floor-to-ceiling, heavy-duty racks like you might see at Costco filled the enormous warehouse. But that’s not what shocked me. They were full of…stuff. Antique cars—yes, cars—huge oil paintings, stacks of books, marble sculptures of Roman soldiers and Greek gods, wine barrels, guns, and…I couldn’t begin to take it all in. Crossing aisle after aisle of shelves that had four or five tiers each, I strolled from one end of the room to the other.

There are three levels to this building
? I’d seen it from the outside. Three distinct stories.
Oh my God. So this is King’s arsenal
. These were the things he scoured the earth to find, some I imagined to keep, some to barter away with members of 10 Club—I’d get to the story of those sick bastards in a moment. Right now, however, I needed to answer the hounding question that I simply didn’t want to ask: Why the hell was I really there? Had King wanted me to find this place, anticipating that something bad was going to happen to him?

If yes, did he know I would come? Given how he’d treated me—horribly—it would have been a gamble. On the other hand, he had recently saved the lives of two people—my mother and brother—whom I loved dearly. Did he know that might buy a little loyalty from me?

Probably. The damned evil, beautiful man knows everything.
He even knew that a part of me felt drawn to him. He’d said I had an attraction to his darkness but just couldn’t admit it to myself. I was beginning to think he might be right, because it wasn’t my happy side preventing me from running out the door. And I was completely fascinated by this place.

Heading toward a wide staircase I spotted, I walked down one of the long, wide aisles that stretched down the center of the warehouse. I passed crate after crate of objects, some with tags, some with little photos stapled to them. There were vases, an Excalibur (the car, not the sword), and cases of whisky. I wondered if it was the good stuff Mack—King’s pilot and right hand—had told me about once. (I was a whisky fan.)

Hands and knees shaking, sweat creeping down the small of my back underneath my red sweater, I became increasingly nervous as I approached the stairs. What would I find on the second floor? Surely the ominous vibe wasn’t coming from the objects down here. Uh-uh. While they were seemingly pricey or rare, they were innocuous.

I grabbed hold of the railing and crept up a few steps. I leaned forward, attempting to catch a glimpse of whatever was up there. I could practically smell the death and pain…the power.

“Eh-hem.” I heard a woman clear her throat.

I spun and practically fell on my rear but caught myself with the railing. An extremely thin brunette, wearing skintight, white leather pants and a gold silk top, stood just a few feet away at the base of the stairs, with one hand cocked on her boney hip.

“Miss Turner,” she said, “nice to see you again.”

Oh no. What’s she doing here?
The woman’s name was Talia. I knew because I’d met her at a 10 Club party King had made me attend a few days before he disappeared. She had a face you couldn’t easily forget, despite really, really wanting to. Because there was such a thing as too much plastic surgery and too much makeup.

“How did you find this place?” I asked.

Ignoring my question, Talia reached into her bag and handed me a folded piece of paper.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Her eyes flickered with abhorrence as they washed over me. “Take it, you moron. It’s a letter.”

I tried not to take offense. After all, the woman looked like her face had been caught in a garbage disposal and then repaired by a wild pack of clowns. She was also insanely jealous of me. Not because of my looks (my blue eyes and shoulder-length, blonde waves were my best features but nothing spectacular). It was because I had been marked by King with a “K” tattoo on the underside of my wrist. I’d been just as shocked, or really more outraged, by it as she had when we first met at that party. Not only did it mean I belonged to King, it made me practically untouchable by anyone in 10 Club. Later, I’d learn that his mark was so much more than that, but in any case, Talia hated me from the very first moment.

I stepped down off the stairs and took the letter from her anorexic hand. I opened it and began to read, but the words made no sense. It was as if they’d been written in Shakespearean English.

“What’s it mean?” I asked.

She slid a cigarette from her white leather handbag and lit it, blowing the smoke into the air like she’d just experienced some great orgasmic satisfaction by giving me that letter. She flicked her ashes on the cement floor and then smiled. “Have you seen King lately?”

Why did I feel as if this was a trick question? “He’s been busy,” I lied, trying to act casual, like I simply hung out at this creepy warehouse all the time, doing work for the man.

“Oh, really?” Her left eye twitched a bit, like she was trying to unstick the lid.

“Yes. Really. Why?” I asked.

“Well, I haven’t seen him, and neither has anyone else. That’s what the letter says.”

I shrugged, trying not to disclose my true feelings on the matter. It was something that Mack had told me about 10 Club: never let them know your weaknesses. In my book, that meant never showing fear, love, or desire for anything or anyone. They’d simply use it to exploit you—a 10 Club obsession.

“And,” Talia added, “he didn’t appear for a summons from the 10 Club a few weeks ago.”

Again I shrugged, hiding my escalating nervousness. Because I guessed that like King, she didn’t do anything if there wasn’t a purpose to it. That meant she wasn’t simply there to deliver a letter from the twisted, cut-throat billionaire club she and King belonged to. The sole purpose of that club, by the way, was to help its members obtain things that money couldn’t buy. At least, not legally. People, power, rare objects…nothing was off the table.

“I’m sure you know by now that King does what he likes when he likes,” I said coolly.

Talia laughed and took another drag of her cigarette, then tossed it onto the floor. “Yeah, well, even King has to come when 10 Club calls. Read the rules. You’re his toy, so I’m sure you can find them and sneak a peek.”

I had no clue where to find the rules, and I hated that she called me his toy, but I suspected that’s why she’d said it.

She turned to leave but then stopped. “Oh, and by the way, Mia, I’d pay special attention to rule five. It clearly states that any member who does not uphold their end of a deal with another member forfeits their property to the Club as compensation to the damaged party.”

Crap
. I swallowed, unable to hide my emotions. I was King’s property—their rules, not mine. That was the bomb she’d come to deliver.

Talia flashed a lopsided grin, knowing she’d gotten under my skin. “I hear that Vaughn is looking forward to getting his hands on you. Something about…wanting to hear you scream in agony?” She shook her head, laughing. “Gotta love the man. He’s a sick fucker.”

No, I didn’t “gotta.” And yes, yes, he was. The man, a slimy, sadistic billionaire—like the rest of the 10 Club members—enjoyed collecting unique and beautiful women just to torture and kill them. He was also 10 Club’s president, which gave a solid understanding of the sort of people they were. It also explained why the thought of becoming
his
nearly made my knees buckle.

“I’ll let King know you came by,” I said with a sugary-sweet voice.

Talia narrowed her dark, mascara-caked eyes. “King has twenty-four hours to deliver on all pending deals, or he will be deemed a forfeiter. His property,
all of it
, will be confiscated.”

She strolled out of the warehouse with a victory swagger and shut the entrance door behind her.

Holy shit. This can’t be happening.
I glanced at my watch. It was almost seven p.m.

I groaned and sank onto the step, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Crap.” I let out a slow, dread-filled breath. “King, where the hell are you?”

This was bad. So, so bad. And here, stupid me had been worried about King’s wellbeing, completely unaware that my own life was about to get run over and turned into a horrific nightmare.

Why was I surprised? Since the day I’d met King, my life kept getting scarier, weirder, and insanely complicated.
But dammit, King, why didn’t you tell me about any of this?
Likely because he told me only what I needed to know in order to get me to do his bidding. After all, in his eyes, I wasn’t his equal, but his property. His to control, his to use, his to play with.

And now your survival depends on him.
If I tried to disappear, not only would it destroy my mother—whose health was extremely fragile after a recent stroke—but I guessed that the Club would find me. They had their ways.

Damn
. I needed to find King. Quickly. But it wasn’t as if the man was on vacation. Something bad had happened. I felt it in my gut.

I dug into my jeans pocket for my phone and dialed my brother, Justin. He’d been the last person to speak with King that I knew of.

Justin’s phone rang, but it went to voice mail. “Justin, it’s Mia. We need to talk about that night again. I need to find King.” I sighed. “Dammit. Call me back. I’m in deep shit.”

I looked at the time again and felt my stomach turn into a vicious knot. The clock was ticking.
I hope to God, King, that you brought me here for a reason.
And that the reason was to help me find him.

CHAPTER
TWO

Armed with a broom handle I’d found inside a small closet on the first floor, I made my way through the dimly lit second story of King’s warehouse. It looked very much like the first floor—shelves crammed with an odd assortment of items that reached the ceiling—however, not long after, I understood why the atmosphere was so foreboding: this floor contained King’s arsenal of objects with special powers. I knew because the bad energy practically jumped off the stuff and pounded me in the face.

There were more books and statues, bottles of strange liquids, including some that looked like blood, and horrific-looking weapons—battleaxes, maces, and spears. Yeah, this time I think I did see Excalibur (the sword, not the car).

Then there were the two heads in giant jars. Men’s heads. One with red hair and the other blond, both with wide-open eyes and mouths frozen in screams. Red lights, lights only I could see, oozed from the tops of the jars into a puddle on the floor.

Why the hell does King have heads?
I glanced down and saw red all over my chest. I jumped.
Holy Christ
! But it was just my red sweater.

Reminder: don’t wear red anymore. Bad idea.

I stepped away from the puddles and then yelped again.
No. No…
Their eyes seemed to follow me, but that couldn’t be possible.

I stumbled back, falling flat on my ass. I sprang to my feet, but my head immediately began to pound and swirl.
Ugh. Not now, Mia. Not now…

King had told me it was the effect of my brain struggling to reconcile conflicting realities. My old reality was the normal one most of us grow up with: a fair, just world with laws to protect us, and where people didn’t put other people’s heads in jars. My new world was the opposite. The new one scared the hell out of me.

I braced myself on the shelf to my side while the sensation passed. As my headache cleared, I noticed the sound of gnawing, like a dog chewing a bone. I looked up, and on the shelf were several tiny potted flowers that seemed to be reaching for my hand.